The Smithsonian having a vote on which video games to showcase at the American Art Museum.  The exhibit, “The Art of Video Games” opens March 16, 2012 at the American Art Museum. It showcases the evolution of video games while examining influential artists, designers, and innovations that molded the industry into its current form and  that drive modern artistic games.

IGN wrote an article on the topic April 7, with a follow-up the next day.  Roger Ebert caught wind of the news and IGN’s article and felt the need to respond.

Those of you that pay attention to Ebert’s website and Twitter feed have probably noticed friction between him and gamers that consider computer and console games as artistic expression in the same vein as movies.  The number of games that fall into this category is small, though may increase due to growing complexity and investments in game development. Ebert does not agree with the idea that games can give the same emotional and intellectual stimulation as movies and has been able to successfully argue his point when gamers try to show him examples of games they consider on par with films.

While I would agree that most games do not compare with film when it comes to giving the audience an emotional and intellectual experience, I do believe that games have the potential to reach an artistic level on par with films.  Many main-stream games invest a lot of time and effort to look good.  While this is necessary because of innovations with high-definition gaming platforms and not necessarily required to create art, it does mean that games are paying more and more attention to cinematography when planning their cut scenes and even framing for game play.

Games have relied on film to supply its artistic vocabulary, unlike film itself, which had to learn from scratch.  This means that games are trying to imitate film in form and function. Games will need to reject the trends of film and find out what they can be by capitalizing on their major strength, which is the ability to interact with the audience and the influence the audience can have on the story.  Free-form sandbox games probably allow the audience the greatest amount freedom when engaging the medium, while RPGs and MMOGs allow the game to interact and be molded by the community.

It’s not the game that will create the art, it’s the gamer that will turn the game into art through their engagement and involvement in the gameplay.

Those that want to learn more about how gamers can create art should investigate the concept of machinima, and the people who create them from games.